Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum

The preface to the Historia Anglorum tells us that it was written at
the direction of Alexander ‘the Magnificent’, bishop of Lincoln (1123–48),
and it must therefore have been begun after April 1123. Alexander commissioned
Henry to ‘narrate the history of this kingdom and the origins
of our people ’. It was to be a history of the English people. As Henry
explains in his preface, it was intended to be a convenient work in a single
volume, drawn from earlier materials which had for that reason to be heavily
abbreviated. Much of the narrative of the pre-Conquest period is indeed drawn
from earlier works, above all Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle. The text is not, however, lacking in rhetorical artifice.
It is organised around the idea that the five invasions of Britain—by the
Romans, the Picts and Scots, the Angles and Saxons, the Danes and the Normans—represent
the five punishments which God has inflicted on the island’s peoples because
of their sinfulness. Henry heightens the drama at key moments, introducing invented
speeches into the mouths of Julius Caesar and of William the Conqueror and into
his accounts of the battles of the Standard and of Lincoln. The narrative is
dignified, especially in books vii and x, by allusions to classical poetry and
by the inclusion of poems, most of them composed by Henry himself.

The greater part of the work, comprising the first seven books, was completed
around October 1131 (the date of the latest event which it records), but
Henry added three more books to the text during the next decade, one of which
(book nine) is a tract about the miracles of England's saints. He also began
a tenth book, covering the reign of King Stephen. As first conceived this book
extended as far as 1138, but the book was extended
as the reign unfolded and, in its final form, it concludes with
the coronation of Henry II in 1154. He also went back and revised the earlier
books during these decades. Thus, there survive among the thirty or so manuscripts
now extant, as Diana Greenway has shown, some six different versions of the
text. They correspond to copies taken in c.1133
(versions 1 and 2), c.1140 (version 3), c.1147 (version
4), c.1149 (version 5) and c.1155 (version 6).
The book was much used by other authors.

Sample Manuscript:Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College, MS 280. This copy of the Historia
Anglorum was written
by two English scribes in the second half of the twelfth-century: hand one
writes folios 6r–195v23 (as far
as 1138, and the words effectus est), hand two folios 195v24–209v4.
Hand one used the third version of the text. Hand two, who was adding material
for 1138–1154, used version six. Thomas Arnold, the editor of the edition
in the Rolls Series, suggested that this copy belonged to St Augustine’s
Abbey, Canterbury, but it lacks an ex libris inscription and M. R.
James, who catalogued the Corpus manuscripts, could not identify it in the
St Augustine’s library catalogue—a text which he had previously
edited. It was given to Corpus Christi College by Matthew Parker, archbishop
of Canterbury (1559–75).

Other Online Images: The British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts offers access to images from
several manuscripts of the Historia Anglorum in its collections, including
two images from (1) Egerton
3668 (an early, pocket-book size, manuscript of the Historia
Anglorum which shows signs of study, correction and cross collation),
and nine images from (2) Arundel 48 (a manuscript written
in the late twelfth century which includes a remarkable picture of Stephen
at the Battle of Lincoln). The British Library’s Online Gallery adds four images from (3) MS Additional
24061, an early fourteenth-century copy.

Text and Translation: Henry of Huntingdon, Historia
Anglorum (The History of the English People), ed. D. E. Greenway, Oxford
Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1996). MVC. With an excellent introduction and notes.
Corpus 280 is discussed on pages cxxv–cxxvi. See also plate four.

Gillingham, J., ‘Henry of Huntingdon: In his Time (1135) and Place (between Lincoln and the Royal Court)’, in K. Stopka (ed.), Gallus Anonymous and his Chronicle in the Context of Twelfth-Century Historiography from the Perspective of the Latest Research (Kraków, 2010), pp. 157–72.

Henry of Huntingdon, Anglicanus Ortus: A Verse Herbal of the Twelfth Century, ed. W. Black, British Writers of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period 3; Studies and Texts 180 (Oxford, 2012). An important new contribution.